To play Level-Up Chess, in addition to a standard chess set you’ll need some way of clearly marking a piece that’s been leveled up, such as by placing a checker underneath them.

Level-Up Chess begins like any other version of chess, but when a piece performs a capture it levels up to a more powerful piece, as follows. When a piece levels up, it gains new options for movement, but also retains all movement options of its old form.

• Pawn -> Squire: May move as a knight, but only forwards. Squires may be promoted upon reaching the last rank, like a normal pawn.
• Bishop -> Archbishop: May move one space orthogonally.
• Knight -> Crusader: If the Crusader captures a pawn or squire, it may immediately move again. This second move may not result in a capture.
• Rook -> Raider: After the rook captures any piece, it may move one space orthogonally.
• Queen -> Empress: May move as a knight.
• King -> Emperor: May make two moves in a row. Can not move into a square which would place it in check, even if it could then move out of check.

Note that in the case of the Knight and the Rook, they may not perform a second move on the same turn that they’re promoted as they weren’t yet a Crusader or Raider when they made the capture.

There are a lot of boardgamers who avoid Magic because of the collectible aspect, and that’s certainly understandable. However, a while ago I discovered a wonderful variant called Stack, and it’s not my favorite way to play. And the best thing about Stack is… it’s completely non-collectible, and it costs only as much as you want to put in it.

At its core, the idea is very simple. Everyone plays from the same giant deck. Ideally, you should choose a selection of what you consider the most fun cards.

The stack is a lot of fun, and everyone I’ve played it with has enjoyed it. Won’t you give it a try?

Rules

There is one other rule which is very important. There should be a supply of basic lands, and whenever a player could draw a card he may instead choose to draw a basic land of his choice. Additionally, if a player could search the library for a basic land, they may take one from the basic land supply (there shouldn’t be any basic lands in the stack itself).

Other than that rule, the format is great because it allows you a huge amount of leeway to tailor it to suit you. For instance, I love Planechase, and a deck of Plane cards in the center of the table is always an important part of stack for me.

There are some practical issues which must be dealt with. Here are my rulings; you should come up with your own to suit your tastes (or you can just use mine, they’ve worked fine for as long as I’ve been using them…).

1. When you start a game of Stack, take a handful of the shuffled stack to form the initial library. Never reshuffle the same cards into the library, always replenish from the unused, shuffled stack.
2. If a basic land would be put into the graveyard, instead it is returned to the pool of basic lands (and note that it doesn’t trigger effects based on cards going to the graveyard).
3. For all effects, the library is both your library and your enemies’ libraries.
4. For all effects, the graveyard is both your graveyard and your enemies’ graveyards.
5. If a non-basic land card would be put in the library anywhere other than on top of the library, it’s exiled instead. If a basic land card would be put into the library anywhere (including on top), it’s returned to the pool of basic lands.
6. In a game with more than two players, the winner gets to sign a single, unsigned card of his choice. It must be a standard magic card (e.g. not a plane or archenemy card), and can not be a basic land. Additionally, it should be a card which was significant to his victory. The winner should sign and date the card, and optionally add a short quote or illustration.

Crafting your Stack

In crafting your stack, aim for cards that you think are fun. They don’t necessarily need to be powerful, or even particularly good (although they should be at least good enough to be worth playing). Though not strictly necessary, I recommend having no more than one copy of any given card in your stack.

In my stack, I put a special emphasis on cards that interacted with the graveyard to take advantage of the shared graveyard rules (e.g. incarnations, cards with flashback, etc), and I also put in pretty much every creature with morph I could find because that’s an ability particularly well-suited to this format.

In addition, you may want to limit cards which allow you to search your library (excepting cards which allow you to search for basic lands, of course), as in my experience they ruin a lot of the fun and unpredictability. I used to have several in the stack, but at best they added little and at worst you’d get people cherry picking the best cards in the stack.

And of course don’t forget all the other stuff out there you could add. I tried Vanguard for a while, but personally I didn’t care for it. Planechase has been a solid addition to my stack, and I’ve crafted some rules to integrate Archenemy into it as well (though they’re yet untested, I’ve only played one game with them).

Spoils of Victory

As I mentioned, one of my rules is that in a game with more than two players*, the winner gets to sign a card. This is one of my favorite parts of the stack, and I love drawing one of the signed cards and the memories it brings back. I’ve actually won with some of the cards I’d signed more than once, including Insurrection and Final Fortune.

Plus, it adds character to your stack, and ensures that you’ve got a chunk of gaming that’s always going to be unique.

*I added the clause about more than two players after a friend of mine, annoyed that he’d never signed a card, basically forced me to play him over and over… After I won 5 or 6 times in a row, and signed as many cards, I realized it was getting a bit silly, so threw the rule in there mostly just to get him to give it up. Incidentally, he did eventually manage to win a game and sign a card… after the rule was already in place. I bent it to get him to shut up.

This is a variant for the deck building game Thunderstone. The basic premise of this variant is that, rather than a single village and dungeon, there are a number of villages and dungeons which the brave adventuring parties may go between.

I’ve playtested this variant once. The game lasted about an hour for 4 players. Final scores were 54, 49, 37 and 28.

Preparation

In addition to a copy of Thunderstone, you’ll need a pawn for each player to represent which village their party is currently visiting.

Village and Dungeon Setup

Shuffle the monster randomizers and deal out 6 randomizers, 2 each in 3 rows. The rows will represent the different villages.

For each village, take the two sets of monsters featured on that city’s randomizer and shuffle them together. Important: These monster piles are not the dungeons!

To form the dungeon for each city, take the top 10 cards from each monster pile from the other two cities. In this way, each city’s dungeon will be built from monsters whose randomizers are in other cities. Deal out 3 monsters from each dungeon as normal to form the hallway.

Now, for each village randomly choose one of the two randomizers to be the current bounty, and place the other one face down beneath the current bounty.

If you only have the base game, shuffle the remaining monsters to form a random encounter deck and set it aside. If you have expansions, use the monster randomizers to pick 4 types of monsters for the random encounter deck.

Finally, use the village and hero randomizers to assign 2 sets of hero cards and 4 sets of village cards to each village.

Player and Deck Setup

In turn order, each player chooses a home village and places their pawn there. The players then create their starting decks as follows:

• 4 Militias
• 1 Dagger
• 1 Torch
• 1 Iron Rations
• 1 of each level 1 hero available at their home village
• 3 different village cards available at their home village

Gameplay

Except as noted here, the game plays as normal.

In addition to visiting the village, entering the dungeon, and resting, players may also travel on their turns.

Visit the Village

When a player visits the village, he may only buy cards available at the village he’s currently at.

Leveling up Heroes

A player may level up militia only into level 1 heroes available at the current village. All other heroes may be leveled up as normal regardless of which village they’re normally purchased from.

Collecting Bounties

In addition, the player may reveal a monster card in his hand matching the village’s current bounty. For example, if the current bounty was “Doomknight – Humanoid,” the player could reveal Lord Mortis, Darkness, or any other monster with that type. When a player does this, he takes the randomizer and keeps it in front of him to show he’s collected the bounty. The bounty is worth 3 points at the end of the game.

If there was another randomizer under the collected bounty, turn it face up to become the new bounty. If this was the last bounty, then the village no longer offers any bounties.

After a player turns up a new bounty, if they turn up a new one and can fulfill that as well they may.

Enter the Dungeon

When a player enters the dungeon, they must battle a monster from the dungeon of the village they’re currently at. If defeated, the monster is replaced as normal from the village’s dungeon. If the player is defeated, the monster is placed at the bottom of the village’s dungeon and replaced as normal.

Spoils

If you have a spoils ability, you may only buy items from the local village.

Travel

The player reveals the top card of the random encounter deck and fights it. This is treated exactly as if the player had entered the dungeon, with the following exceptions. If the player is successful at defeating the monster, he may move his pawn to any other village. If the player is defeated, his turn ends and his pawn stays in the same spot. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, the monster is placed at the bottom of the random encounter deck. A player may never under any circumstances add a monster to his deck as the result of a random encounter.

For all purposes including light and other card effects, the monster is treated as though it were in rank 2 of a dungeon’s hallway.

Spoils

If you have a spoils ability during a traveling turn, you may only purchase your item from the village you’re traveling to.

Game End and Victory

The game ends when one of the two following conditions are met:

• Any dungeon is completely exhausted (i.e. no cards left in the deck and all monsters in the hallway killed).
• Any two villages have no bounties left.

If the game ends because of a dungeon deck becoming exhausted, the player who killed the last monster there gets the Stone of Mystery thunderstone, worth 3 victory points.

Tally up victory points as normal. Each collected bounty is worth 3 points. The winner is the player with the most points. In case of a tie, the player with the most collected bounties and thunderstones wins. Further ties should be broken with fisticuffs.